AHE 599: Rsearch Methods in Higher Education

Finding Books:

OSU Libraries Catalog provides information about items owned by the main libraries and our two branch libraries in Bend and Newport, including books, government documents, visual materials and the titles of journals we subscribe to.

Summit Catalog (Collective catalog for 30+ libraries in Oregon and Washington) lets you access even more materials through a cooperative borrowing arrangement.

 

Finding Dissertations

Use Dissertation Abstracts database to search for theses and dissertations written on your topic at other educational institutions (beyond OSU). Use the link in the record, InterLibraryLoan (ILL) Request,  or you can request theses and dissertations through the regular InterLibrary Loan form.

Finding Articles:

Professional Development Collection provides access to articles in over 300 peer reviewed education journals.

ERIC  (Education Resources Information Center) is the single largest education database, covering journals, issue digests, conference proceedings, classroom guides, etc. Many records are linked to full-text.

Education Research Complete also provides access to an extensive collection of journal material, conference papers and books. 

If you want to locate a specific journal article:

1. check our E-journals list first to see if we have electronic access to the publication for the date on which your article was published.
2. If no electronic access is available, check the OSU Libraries catalog by limiting your search to "Journals" and then entering the Journal Title to see if we have a print subscription which covers the date of your article's publication.
   
3. We can usually get articles from libraries that own a journal we don't have through our InterLibrary Loan Services . Electronic copies of articles are typically sent to you as a link in an e-mail, so be sure you regularly check your ONID e-mail account or have mail forwarded to the account you regularly use.  

 

Please note: for off-campus access to databases:  "Computers connecting via private internet providers or from non-OSU sites will be prompted for a name and OSU ID before being forwarded to the selected resource."             

• Call Computer Consulting, 737-7434, during business hours if you have problems accessing the databases from home or work.
  

 

More Ideas: 

The Education Research Guide provides a more comprehensive view of using the OSU Libraries resources for education related information seeking.

Research Tutorial is a self-paced review of the research process. 

Online Search Strategies

 

Narrow/ Focus Your Search	Broaden/ Expand Your Search
And or Not connector between concepts	"Or" connector between synonyms
Field Limiters, e.g., dates, type of document	Truncation or Wildcard (e.g., child*)
Use Thesaurus or controlled vocabulary (human assigned subject headings)	Free-text or keyword searching (computer mediated, no human intervention)
Phrase or proximity searching, e.g., student services  or first year n3 retention

 

• Librarian: Paula McMillen, PhD
• Office Location: Valley Library - 4th floor
• Office Hours: by Appt. Ph: 541.737.7272
• Email: Click to reveal email

• Name: Dr. Jessica White
• Email: Click to reveal this email
• Office Location: Education Hall, Room 412

Created at Harvard's graduate school of education, this online tutorial describes many of the in's and out's of using APA style for writing and citing.

Many tools are available for helping you keep track of developments in your field of interest. You can create "alerts" which will update you when a new issue of a journal comes out by sending the table of contents to an e-mail account or RSS feed. You can create similar alerts for searches in many of our databases. Mini-tutorials on these and other topics are available at the Keeping Current with Research page.

Librarians are available by phone, e-mail and IM during most hours the library is open. See your options here .

 

 

 

• Part 1

  Identify, checkout, and briefly review/scan (you do not need to read it!) at least two OSU master's theses (written within the past five years). I would suggest selecting theses generally in the social science and humanity areas as those represent topics and writing style that are more familiar. Do not necessarily select CSSA master's theses-branch out to other disciplines on campus.

       

  Here are some helpful tips for identifying theses in the OSU Libraries catalog :

  • Do a Keyword search and use the terms OSU theses and then another concept term of interest, e.g., technology, multicultural, etc.
  • All the theses and dissertations are located on the 5th floor in the LD call number range.  They can be checked out like other books at the circulation desk.
    

  Part 2

  Identify, select, and print out two recent (within the past five years) articles related to your research area of interest. Try to select one article that you believe reflects a qualitative approach and one that you believe reflects a quantitative approach. We will review in much greater depth these concepts in the coming classes and use the articles you selected as examples or non-examples so please bring the hard copies of your articles to the next class.

  Use one of the databases identified under "Finding Articles" in the Search Tools and Guides section.

  • Specify your publication dates for the last 5 years
    
  • You can use the term qualitative in your search in addition to the key concepts of interest, in order to try and narrow your results to those using qualitative methodologies. Or you might use the term for a specific methodology such as focus groups, etc..
  • Many terms can be used to help locate quantitative articles such as experimental, data, analysis, statistics,etc.
  • When using the ERIC database, you can specify "Reports--Research" as a Publication Type to limit your search results.
  • Since you only need 2 articles, you may also choose the option of limiting your search to "full-text" but you will miss some things by doing this. We have electronic access to many journals that are not directly linked to these particular databases.